GRANDVIEW, Missouri (KSHB) A 4-year-old boy was nearly abducted in Grandview, Missouri on Monday, but a quick-acting neighbor helped prevent a tragedy.

Police say Edwina Bates grabbed the child as the child’s mother watched from her wheelchair. A neighbor and his guest heard her cries for help and followed the woman up the stairs in the apartment building, where they confronted her on a stairwell balcony 20 feet above the ground.

The woman refused to return the child and hung the boy over the railing. One of the men, neighbor Lorin Carr, was able to grab the boy and return him to his mother unharmed.

“I’m not a hero, but I mean yeah, I had to get him back. That’s all I can say,” Carr told reporters. “If she would have dropped him, he would have been seriously hurt or dead.”